From the Ashes

I've realized recently that we are moving far from what I believe was the original theme of our world. More and more often our countries are highly developed and civilized. Now certainly there are specific breaks in this trend of progress. Trodden War between Eadhaolin and Imperator, the rebuilding of post-great invasion Imperator, the relative poverty of most rural folk in Eadhalion, Inqusition killing people, city-state warfare ect.

However, the overall idea of a world just breaking out of the ruin of the Great War has been replaced by more recent history and progress. I'm not saying we should change this trend I was simply wondering if anyone held issue with this and if so how we might turn toward a more wilder world.

Also on a completely different note I think we should create a sub-forum specifically for nations in The Land and It's People. It just doesn't seem to make a whole lot of sense to see something like the Mortii and The Blades alongside nations profiles. I think a division between say People and Kingdoms would be nice.

Technically the Blades are relevant to the Conclave, which reaffirms its position in The Land and It's People. I'm not really sure if it's large enough that we really have to worry about it right now, but if others think that it'd also be good at this point to have such division, then I'll go ahead and do it.

I'm not really sure what you mean by the nature of this thread, though. We decided some time ago that this happens 200 years after the end of the Great War. It's also likely that many nations were already done with the fighting before the end was 'officially declared'.

It is likely, but I liked the original image of the war just totally destroying everything in it's path, and totally f**king things up even to this day.

Crom I get was your saying, and honestly it's my big concern too, because at this point of all the realms we have right now...it seems like the Great War was fought exclusively by Atimar.

Really this it why I REALLY want a History section in the nation profiles, if only to clarifies these things you understand.

Well right now Imperator definitely was involved in the war though the greatest damage was mostly done to them at its closing. Think WW2 where Imperator is the United States sending people to die in other lands and ends the war feeling pretty powerful. But then hundreds of thousands of Canadians turned super mutants invade America and lay waste to most of it before going away. That's basically Imperator in the Great War.

Ok that still leaves a sizable hole in that it doesn't really clarify where the war was fought...

I figured Eadhaolin would have worked out as such, but you've implied that they actually did quite well during the war, which would not be indicative of a major invasion taking place there.

I think it might be more suitable to decide the..I guess you could say rate of death during the war.

Was it slow with skittering areas of conflict and intermittent times of peace while various sides re-armed?

Or (as I favor) did every nation essentially magically-nuke every other nation in the opening year of the war, meaning about 90% of the deaths, property destruction and permanent loss and destruction of knowledge occur in a 1 year period, with the following 999 years basically amounting to people who've been gutted from the neck down feebly pawing at each other in their last shuddering moments before mutual death?

Then again I favor all sorts of things that both mutually contradict each other and don't seem popular on this forum. Like a magitek/cyberpunk distant past reduced to traditional sword-n' sorcery present, and all examples of functional magic having enough drawbacks to not be a better option than doing things the mundane way, save in corner cases.

I always saw it as starting out as a massive bar room fight...pretty much every nation for itself, or in most cases every city for itself. The first few hundred years or so being comprised of almost pure chaos, akin to the dark ages, but with steampunk robots and uber magics so...lots of self perpetuated death and violence...

After a while power would consolidate to the ones with the most early victories and proper battle lines would be drawn in a...lull of sorts...before things picked back up again as the war continued out of bitterness, fear, envy, power lust, name your poison really...

Then again I favor all sorts of things that both mutually contradict each other and don't seem popular on this forum. Like a magitek/cyberpunk distant past reduced to traditional sword-n' sorcery present, and all examples of functional magic having enough drawbacks to not be a better option than doing things the mundane way, save in corner cases.

This is actually canon, if you didn't notice. I kept the whole "Technologically advanced to almost Industrial Revolution going to hell with the Fall" tidbit you proposed.

I think the best take of the war, and the most logical, would probably be that the very early years, probably the first decade or so, were particularly vicious and death tolls were high. Shortly there afterward, as things weren't progressing as fast or well enough, things got worse, and the death tolls reached astronomical levels. This is when several nations actually fell or were simply erased. This continues for some fashion until in some areas either a shaky peace or a total annexation of one's enemies was achieved, while in other areas the wars raged on. This is the longest period of the Great War, probably 700-900 years, where this is intermittent peace and war, and the war never fully goes away and wounds never fully heal. That's why things don't seem so utterly hellish currently, because not only were things more mild in most places during the very last parts of the Great War, but it's been 200 years since then.

I say all that because a thousand years of all-out, balls-to-the-wall straight-up war is not only illogical, even with everyone having China's populace it just couldn't work out right, at least in my mind.

We could always shorten the duration of the war. It might be more impressive if everything went to hell in the span of something like 50-150 years where large tracts of land are literally still bloodstained and whatnot. That and the sheer psychological imprint it'd leave on people that would last to the current day.

That's, kinda what I was going for...except the death tolls were a lot worse in the beginning and then got a bit better as people started organizing...only a bit though.

And my opening period was longer and...a lot more chaotic...

I prefer an opening war of about three decades or so that basically ruined the world and made any maps from years past utterly useless. Then several hundreds years of war between the survivors ultimately culminating in some sort of bitter end struggle that ended the war and gave way to the current peace under Conclave rule.

And thus we find the problem, we've all got vague interpretations of a single event that was never well defined...and now it's all conflicted and what have you...

I mean I suppose we could just leave it up in the air, with just rumors and legend surrounding the early years of the war...

But that seems like a bit of a cop out to me...

We need one idea of what happened and stick with it.

Well fact finding mission number one. The war lasted one thousand years correct?

Most assuredly...a fact I quite like if only for the sheer epic scope of it.

Alright. Well than I honestly don't think a magic-nuke Armageddon works then as there is no practical society could prolong 1,000 years of war if 90% of it is wiped out in the first year.

Well fact finding mission number one. The war lasted one thousand years correct?

A 'fact' that can be subject to retconning if it seems better to do so, as I've already postulated (though I'm not saying it will be or what not, it just may seem better that we tone it down. Also, perhaps not a literal 1,000 years as that's kind of cheesy...).

Alright. Well than I honestly don't think a magic-nuke Armageddon works then as there is no practical society could prolong 1,000 years of war if 90% of it is wiped out in the first year.

So you're basically saying that we're ruling out anyone actually lasting 1,000 years, or at least maintaining a huge influence throughout the war (perhaps as a shot at Atimar) if we're doing the magic-nuke Armageddon theory?

Pretty much. Heck, no one could even have a medium-sized influence. You're basically one shotting the entire world. The 10% left is going to be spread across the continent and is certainly going to be in no shape to carry on a "Great War" that lasts for another 999 years.

Technically The Fall is the 'one shotting' the world. Do we even need ANOTHER magical armageddon that happens RIGHT AFTER?

I really don't think so. The disaster at Tilburry is pretty much enough to shotgun the whole process of nation wars that send the world spiraling down to where it currently is.

He's mostly saying that any war being fought after 90% of the world gets wiped out...isn't going to be too terribly 'Great'

90% of whatever... not really sure how accurate that is in the first place, but it's not caused by the Fall (although that does certainly cause a lot of mayhem, but there are survivors and refugees). What causes it is the beginning of the Great War, which the latter parts are simply the aftermath of the hell that everyone lives through (and causes) towards the beginning.

...I...think we already knew that Chaos.

In fact I'm pretty sure that's what both me and Crom meant.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding what your getting at...

What I asked that Crom answered at the top of this page was just to clarify what he meant.

Then I didn't really have a point, I was just commenting.

Also, thought occurs:

I think what would help everywhere being more affected by the Great War in terms of its history would be defining where exactly most of the shit hit the fan. I'd say everything north and west of the northern-most tip of the Spine on the map, then to Eadhaolin and down to the mid Black Mountains where Imperator is. Everything outside of that has a bit of an excuse, and everything inside is where shit went down really hard.

That said, there should be a lot more ruins of villages, towns, cities and fortresses, or at least mention that the current location of villages, towns, etc. are on old ruins (or the opposite, since people might be culturally superstitious).

We also need to start having a lot smaller nations involved there, including a couple that are just "Badlands" that no one can really stake a claim on. Having all of these big nations doing so well gives the idea that there's a lot of stability in the region. That's fine and dandy for the ones we have, because everything we should have should reflect the desire for stability.

However, it should also reflect people's stubbornness. Not everyone is so cool with being conquered, and not so cool with allying people from regions that continually raped and pillaged your area for generations (or allying such a weak region that your ancestors raped and pillaged. They'll just be freeloading).

Therefore, there should be a good number of quite small countries that are city-states or a bit larger that people became rulers in, or whose family did rule but their empire got split up, or etc., and no one's really keen on allying with anyone. What's nice about this is it seems like what we currently have is a city state or an alliance of city states that got powerful and conquered land towards the end of the Great War.

I'm reminded that I made a mercenary state called Imilis-Ceruith or something like that way back when. I'll go ahead and say that it's near the Mearc and mark it at some later date, as well import it to the R&D forum and finish it.

Thoughts?

I completely agree that we should try and cease building large nations at this rate and stick with unclaimed tracts of lawless land and city-states. Create more keeps and rundown villages that may or may not make a claim to part of the surrounding area but lack the power or cohesion much past that. And develope more ruins that dictate to a past of great war. That is exactly onpar with my thinking and it is something I'd lost track of recently.

As far as where the Great War was waged I suggest for now we mantain that it involved everywhere north of the Spine. I'd say just about everywhere was ravaged horribly at some point during the thousand years of war. The major nations now mostly represent those geographic areas that were in power at the end of the thousand year period and not neccessarily power players at the beginning of the war. It is very unlikely any of the current nations that existed now are the same as those that existed a thousand years ago.

Note: With reference to the fact that nothing of the nations that exist now existed at the beginning I'd like to make an exception for Atimar. I'd love to see them potrayed as the Old Empire whose source of pride can be traced in lineage that goes back a thousand years though obviously Atimar today would again be radically different from the Empire of Atimar from ages past.

Thoughts?

I agree with everything that you've said (some of it was stuff that I had already stated anyway).

As for why I limited the affected area of the Great War, some things came to mind with Sciras. They are the easternmost group of nations north of the Spine. They were certainly affected by the Great War, but I figure that the war spilled east as it went on. The land where Sciras is located might have had another, less developed nation there (or a more technologically advanced one that was just destroyed during the Fall), but it originates from the last century or so of the Great War.
(I believe I posted a picture of it, but if I didn't, then I'll have to go ahead and fix that)

What I really meant was, the area I mentioned was always affected. That land faced the horrors of war near-constantly, while regions more east and west tasted it as time wore on instead. People likely fled to the borders of civilation, which caused new nations to form, which opened up the possibility for more war on the fringes, and it cycled like that.

Atimar and the Conclave are the only two nations that I know of (other than whatever's at the Dra'Ghul islands) that have lasted the majority of the Great War. Atimar lasted all of it, and the Conclave was founded decades after it began. They are also pretty much the only two nations that geographically could last all that time. No matter what happened to Atimar on the mainland, it had an island and a region of land on the isle to hold. The Conclave had huge magical resources and a cliff-island stronghold.

Another thought about Atimar: What's stopping them from owning a larger portion of the isle? Other than Weisshaupt, I'm not really sure of any other powers there unless something like my idea of the Raiders are there (in which case expansion would just bring more trouble). This is likely a question for MN.

Indeed a question for MN.

On Conclave: I'd be more interested in seeing them as being founded in the last couple of centuries of the Great War. They would have been the organization that is generally attributed as having ending the Great War and the blatant use of magic. I think it would add more credence to them as an authority figure.